This invention relates generally to datascopes, and more particularly, to datascopes that display multiple signals in multiple dimensions.
In a conventional analog real-time oscilloscope, a trigger circuit detects a trigger event of an input signal and enables a display device such as a cathode-ray tube (CRT) to display a waveform of the signal during a sweep interval that follows the trigger event. In other words, the oscilloscope displays the evolving signal over time. Some specialized oscilloscopes may have more than two input channels. However, the display is always restricted to two degrees of freedom, where one dimension is almost always time, and the other voltage.
Some oscilloscopes have an X-Y mode. In this mode, a first input signal is plotted against a second signal. However, such oscilloscopes do not provide for a way to plot signals in higher dimensions, or to reparameterize any of the input data. It is desired to provide a datascope that can deal with a larger number of input signals, and to display those signals in a higher dimension than two. Furthermore, it is desired that one of the dimensions is not necessarily time.
The invention provides a signal analyzing and display system including an input interface for continuously acquiring signals in parallel. A first triggering component samples signals according to predetermined time intervals. A second triggering component samples the input signals according to values of the input signals. A memory stores a reparameterization network.
The reparameterization network is arranged to arbitrarily reparameterize the sampled input signals to vowels having RGBxcex1 values and x,y,z coordinates. A third triggering component samples the vowels, and stores the sampled vowels in a display memory. Then, a rendering engine can render the stored vowels on a display device. In addition, the system can include a controller for controlling the acquiring and reparameterizing of the input signals. A blending function xcex2 can also be included with each voxel. If there is a blending function, then a new voxel value does not overwrite a previously stored value. Instead, the new and old value are blended according to the function xcex2. The function can store the maximum, minimum, or average value of the old and new voxel values, or other derived values. The system can also display a time sequence of volumes, that is, different volume views, over a time interval.